Please forget the past, Amrita. We have different roles now, we’re different people. You are Maya. Perhaps someday, somehow, you can bring hope to your people, though I don’t know what hope can do in the face of force.
Please never come back to Ananta. If you do, I’ll have no option except to turn you in to Sikander. I hope for this reason, and for both of our sakes, that we never see each other again.
Arjun
I felt anger, sadness, confusion, fear. I wanted to tear the letter up and scream. Forget what had happened? How could I? The letter made him sound like a completely different Arjun, someone who had been brainwashed by Sikander and influenced by grief.
I realized then that I hadn’t entirely given up hope in the desert. I had still believed Arjun and I would find our way back to one another, even if I never returned to Shalingar, even if I was no longer Princess Amrita.
But now I knew for certain that there was truly no way back.
I wiped tears from my eyes with the edge of my sleeve, no doubt smearing mud all over my face. I was self-conscious and didn’t want to draw attention to myself, but the tears poured down my cheeks as though there was no stopping them.
“He’s saying all that to protect you,” Thala said.
But it didn’t matter. Arjun’s words devastated me. Shalingar was gone; it was no longer the place I had known. And Arjun was gone too, or may as well have been. It was over, whatever had existed for a moment between us, extinguished by the harsh gale of reality.
Kalyani sat down beside me. “I take it you’ve gotten some bad news. Come,” she urged me, eyeing my filthy clothes. “You’ve had a long journey. Let’s get you both a bath and some rest before we speak.”
Instantly, I remembered why I was there.
“No,” I said to her, squaring my shoulders. “We have to speak now. I’m here to tell you that you’re in danger. Shalingar has been attacked, and I fear the Janaka Caves are next.”
She nodded, unsurprised. “We’ve been preparing for this possibility for years,” Kalyani reassured me. “We can never thank you enough for the sacrifices you’ve made to come here. You must rest. Even if these people you speak of are able to find the caves, it will take them some time. As you can see, they’re very difficult to reach. Rest now, then we’ll talk some more. You’ll need all your strength for what’s to come.”
I looked at Thala, and she simply shrugged her shoulders at me.
I nodded, finally feeling my exhaustion, my muscles aching from our climb up the mountains.
“Are you the leader of the Sybillines?” I asked Kalyani.
She shook her head. “There are no leaders here, nor followers. But you could say that I am a kind of advisor to my people. If you wish, I can advise you as well. But that is your choice, and everything will be made clear to you in due time. Now Tamas will take you to the old guest quarters.” She gestured to a young man who had been tending to the birds.
I nuzzled Saaras, grateful to be reunited with him, before I turned to Tamas.
Tamas smiled at us. “Welcome to the Janaka Caves,” he said with an amused smile on his face. “What an exciting day it is for us. Visitors are an uncommon thing here.”
“How uncommon?” Thala asked.
He frowned and took a minute to respond. “To be honest, I’ve never seen a visitor in my life,” he said as he led us up a path that took us into the wall of caves. Hundreds of sets of eyes continued to watch us. “At least not of the human variety,” he said, gesturing to the flock of birds by the lagoon. “And don’t mind them,” he whispered, jerking his chin toward the Sybillines poking their heads from their caves, watching us with curiosity. “They’re all very friendly, just a bit surprised. Of course we all knew that eventually you’d come. It’s part of the legend.”
“The legend?” I asked.
“The legend about Maya’s return. And also, we can sense these things. We have powers of sight.” He turned to Thala. “You do too.”
Thala nodded.
“You’ll fit right in. But you must forgive our manners. We’re not used to guests. It’s difficult enough to find the caves, and then with Makara the Gatekeeper . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “But it appears that you passed the test. You didn’t try to kill him . . .”
“We considered it,” Thala grumbled.
“Oh, Makara is indestructible. When the world ceases to exist, Makara will still be here. He’ll outlive everything. But a good thing you didn’t try to kill him. He wouldn’t have taken to that well. And he needs occasional naps. His naps are when he’s most productive.”
“Does he really create, destroy, and sustain the world?”
“That’s right. He’s a very important axle of this world, the center of everything. And the saddhus tell us that the vast majority of people on the planet have never even heard of him. Strange,” he said, smiling, “this world of yours. I’m told that there is so much progress, and yet, the roots of our existence on this planet have been forgotten, just as one forgets his or her birth.”
We had come to a stop on the stone path that wound itself around the volcano.
Tamas gestured to an entrance in the rock leading to a grotto. “The old guest quarters. They’ve never been used. Well, only once. A long time ago. But . . . we’ve kept them ready for you.”
“I have so many questions,” I told him.
“And they will all be answered. But Kalyani is right. You should rest now. Everything will make more sense to you once you’ve had a chance to reset your mind.” He grinned at us. “Just like Makara the Spider.”
“I have a question,” Thala asked. “If you never have any visitors, why would you have guest quarters?”
Tamas smiled. “The ancients built them. This is where Maya lived for a time, before she went to join—”
“Her lover?” Thala raised an eyebrow.
“The vetala,” I corrected her, blushing.
“Not just any vetala. The Keeper of the Library of All Things,” Tamas said to us.
¤
We stepped into the cave, and under a curved ceiling of rock were two beds with white and blue striped linens. Next to one of the beds, a small heating stove. A mirror hung just above a basin. Perched on a wooden table, a wooden bowl overflowed with fruit. Two stone bathtubs had been filled with water. I dipped my hand in one. It was still warm.
I washed my face in the basin, taking in my visage.
I looked older, and my face looked gaunt even though I had been on this journey for only a few days. And yet, I could tell that I had aged, that I had changed so much already. Even though we had made it here, there was no end to my worries.
“They always knew something like this could happen . . . but where will they go, Thala?”
Thala closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were the color of sand. “Whether Sikander comes here or not, he won’t be able to harm the Sybillines.”
“There are at least a few hundred souls living here. Where are they supposed to hide? This is the last hidden place on the Earth.”
“On the Earth, yes.”
I shook my head at her cryptic response, and my mind returned to Arjun. My heart was filled with a desperate ache for him. “Do you know if I’ll ever see Arjun again?”
Thala closed her eyes, then opened them. This time, they were the color of the lagoon at the base of the caves. “I think . . . you will.” She looked confused for a moment before she turned to me. “It’s harder and harder for me to see anything now. But he’s right. It’ll never be the same between you again.”
Tears slipped from my eyes as I thought of him.
But there was something else on Thala’s mind. “I don’t feel safe here.”
“But you said Sikander wouldn’t—” The realization struck me as I said the words. “Chamak,” I remembered in frustration, burying my face in my h
ands.
“I don’t think we should stay here very long.”
I shook my head. “We won’t.” But I was overwhelmed with the thought of where exactly we would go next.
“Amrita?”
I turned to her.
“I know you feel like it’s all lost right now . . .”
“It is all lost, Thala.” I sighed. “Arjun is Sikander’s satrap. My kingdom is a colony of Macedon. My father and Mala are dead. My people have been enslaved. And I’ve brought you into a place where you’re surrounded by the very thing that could kill you. That almost did kill you, and I didn’t even think of that till now. What’s wrong with me?”
Thala shook her head. She was calm in the face of my panic, my outrage. “We won’t stay here long” was all she said.
“And where will we go?”
“I don’t know.”
I felt helpless, lost.
“Listen to me, Amrita. Before a few days ago, you didn’t even know of the Library, you didn’t know about the Keeper. You didn’t know you were Maya. You didn’t know you could crawl through a tunnel or be lifted on a sandstorm or outsmart Sikander’s men.” She looked right at me with a conviction that surprised me. “But now you do. There are answers to all our questions,” she said. “Just because you haven’t found them and I can’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
I didn’t say anything more. Slowly, I removed my shoes before I undressed and stepped into the bathtub. I lingered there silently for at least an hour, still startled by all the revelations that had alighted upon me since our arrival here.
As the water cooled, my eyelids grew heavy. I reached for a linen towel on the side of the tub and stepped out, wiping myself dry.
Within minutes, I was in bed, wrapped in a warm blanket. My mind was blank. I didn’t know where we would go next, how the Sybillines could help me, or even if they would. I was grasping for answers, for absolutes, trying to hold on to anything that made sense. But nothing did. The Library, maybe it really is the only way, I thought before I fell into the deepest slumber of my life.
Twenty-Eight
THE AFTERNOON SUN FELL into the cave in thick, honeyed sheets that warmed my arms and legs. I opened my eyes slowly, absorbing the light like a plant desperate for the sun’s rays. I must have slept through the night and into the morning.
I sat up, noticing a stack of clothing at the foot of my bed. I reached for it. A white linen tunic and a pale blue salvar. Someone had lit the heating stove by my bed, and I watched the blue flames flicker and pop as I pulled the soft fabrics over my skin. Slowly, I ventured outside, my feet bare on the toasted rock.
From the ledge outside my cave, I scanned the bowl beneath me. Saaras was feeding with a flock of other birds. Thala was already up, dipping her feet in the blue lagoon by the falls, chatting with Tamas, who was sailing a miniature boat on the flat surface of the water. I noted the change in Thala’s body language. She was relaxed, laughing. I felt a mixture of emotions: relief that she was with someone, and glad that she felt at ease, but I was also jealous of her in that moment, envious that she could feel light when I felt as though I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I sat down, hanging my legs off the thick ledge. My eyes followed the whirl of the rock, and I wondered how far up it went.
Did it reach the heavens? Was there even a heaven? If there was, was that where my father and Mala were right now? Or were they at some way station? A place where they regrouped, waiting to be reborn?
What force in the world had made my father my father, and Mala mine too? What had brought them into my life instead of someone else’s? What set of miracles, what magic delivered the people we loved to us? And what set of fates took them away?
Was it all connected to the Library of All Things?
I glanced at the mural of my own face. I felt as though it was mocking me. All I had in common with Maya was that we looked alike. She was magnificent, fearless, passionate. She inspired such hope in people, even hundreds of years after her existence.
But I was a girl on the run, terrified, guilty that I had managed to survive while almost everyone I knew had perished. And even those who did survive were suffering far worse than I was. Arjun’s life was ruined. Shree and Bandaka were suffering too, along with all my father’s subjects. And now I had brought Thala to a place that was dangerous for her.
“Peaceful, isn’t it?” I heard a voice behind me.
I turned. It was Kalyani. I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether to tell her that I didn’t know how to be at peace, that I didn’t know how to be myself anymore. Still, I swallowed my words, grateful for the Sybillines’ hospitality. “It’s beautiful. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe how secluded it is.”
Kalyani sat down next to me. She moved like a young person, with grace and strength, fluidity in her limbs. “Secluded, yes. But we really have no need for interaction with the outside world. We’re entirely self-sufficient. We build our own things, grow our own food.”
“And you mine your own chamak too.” I watched as a group of people collected the chamak from the walls and the floor of the caves, using comb-like tools to gather it, scrape it off the rock, and deposit it into bowls. “What is it, exactly? Chamak?”
“Some people here believe that it is what’s left over from Makara’s dreams. Perhaps the grit from his eyes? Me, personally, I don’t know what it is,” she said. “Anyway, after it goes through the ascetics, it eventually ends up in the hands of a few merchants who are taxed on it by the throne of the kingdom that we happen to be residing within.”
“Shalingar,” I said. “But how do you transport it out of here?”
Kalyani pointed to the flock of white birds nesting by Saaras. The birds were of different sizes, some even larger than Saaras, but many smaller. There must have been hundreds of them. A man was carefully attaching and removing tiny sacks from their feet. Some of the birds sprang up into the air, flying out of the top of the volcano.
“Mostly bar-headed geese. They’re small and sleek. They can fly at altitudes no other bird can. They’ve been trained to fly south, toward the forest where the monks take the chamak, feed them, and send them back to us with things we need.”
“Things you need?” I asked.
Kalyani shrugged. “We have no need for money. Or material things. Although sometimes they send us seeds so we can grow fruits.”
“In exchange for chamak?” I raised an eyebrow. It baffled me that the most valuable substance in the world—a material that Sikander had been willing to kill for—was being traded for seeds.
“Everyone has their own currency. Here, chamak is abundant. We harvest it during the day, and the next morning, the entire rockface is covered with it again.”
“And outside these caves, it’s liable to start wars,” I said to her before I remembered what Arjun had said in his letter. “I . . . can’t return home. My kingdom has been overthrown. I don’t know where to go now.”
“Let me show you something,” Kalyani said, getting up.
I followed her up the swirl of the rocks, and we passed by people going about their own business in their cave homes. I don’t know what I had expected of the Sybillines, exactly, but these people appeared to be no different from us.
A handful of them continued to harvest chamak, but most of the others were simply enjoying themselves, playing a game that resembled marbles but with pebbles made of volcanic lava, painting mandalas across the base of the volcano, or simply sitting by the lagoon near Thala, talking. Some fed birds while others hung wet fabric from clotheslines outside their caves or washed dishes in the waterfall.
“It’s lovely here,” I said. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to leave.”
“But people do leave. In fact, every moon, people leave. They wait for Makara to sleep, and off they go. Mostly the
young. They want to be a part of the larger world. There’s only one condition—they’re free to leave, but they can never come back. My own children left. They must have children of their own now,” she said wistfully.
“You’ve never left this place then?” I asked.
“No one you see here ever has. We’re protectors of the Janaka Caves, of a way of life; it’s one of our primary duties in this world.”
We arrived at a cave that was so high up that looking down at the bowl made me dizzy. “I know you’ve been questioning who you are,” Kalyani said as she guided me into the cave. “This might help you understand.”
We emerged inside what appeared to be a shrine. A statue of Maya stood before me. I gasped, still struck by the resemblance. But what left me speechless were the murals around Maya. They moved and changed. There was Ananta, shrouded in mist, rain falling over Chanakya Lake. And the tall buildings and arenas of Macedon that appeared to reach the sky. There was the sun rising over the east and setting in the west.
“We’re not just protectors of the caves,” Kalyani said. “Makara might create and destroy the world. But who do you think sustains it?” she said.
My head whipped around to look at her. “So you . . . sustain it? Not Makara?”
“This is how the Earth speaks with us,” she told me. She touched the mural of Ananta, and slowly, the rain stopped, and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. “It’s what we’ve been doing for years.” She touched another wall where snow was falling over a landscape. All of a sudden, the snow halted.
“Come outside with me,” she said.
We stepped outside the cave, and the sight before me left me speechless. Across the surface of the caves, the chamak moved and glistened into images of the outside world. There were projections of children being born, couples falling in love, elderly men and women on canes, crossing streets, children laughing, enemies fighting.
“This is where the whole world is recorded by the Earth. Every day is replayed here. Every birth, every death, every peal of laughter, every moment of despair,” she said, and I watched as one of the murals morphed into an image of me sleeping in the caves.
The Library of Fates Page 18